Thanks for letting me/us know about the VM page. I'm vaguely familiar with Wikipedia, but I had no idea Wikiquote even existed. And, damn, if I'm not about quoting all my favorite shows. (I even had a "favorite quotes" website up on my domain awhile ago ... ) Lizzy

I'm intrigued by your comment to RPickman about Gilmore Girls vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer formatting, because I hadn't noticed there was any difference. (I created the whole scheme for Mystery Science Theater 3000, copied it for Buffy, and then later copied it for GG.) The main differences I perceive now are that (A) Buffy (and now MST3K) has a complete table of contents and forego the episode numbers, whereas the much-younger GG still only lists episodes with quotes, so it still needs the numbers to help editors place new episodes; and (B) there are far fewer links in GG, because (as of my writing this) only Lorelai Gilmore has a live Wikipedia link. (When I implemented this format for Buffy, not even all the regular characters had their own Wikipedia pages. Now just about every character who was on the show more than once or twice has their own page.)

These differences show why it's a good idea to copy the instructions instead of making a reference to them. Yes, it's less redundant, but it also slaves the one show to the other audience's decisions to change the format. It's easy to forget that, in the absence of rigidly-enforced policy, any of these things can change. Buffy is basically Gilmore Girls with ten times the input from the community.

Of course, you are hoping to encourage a single standard, which would make this issue irrelevant in the long term. I wish you luck, but I suspect you have a challenge ahead. Jeandré (who created and promulgated a competing format structure for Firefly and many other shows) and I worked on these differences last year, and found that (A) most other Wikiquotians weren't especially concerned about show quote or their formats, and (B) we had to agree to disagree on several issues. When RoboAction joined the effort late last year, his enthusiasm brought along more (and different) good ideas. I strongly suspect that Wikiquote's TV and film audience will have to grow significantly and become rather more adversarial before we have gain a real need to create standards through compromise. Also, there may never be a single one, as different shows can demonstrate different reasons for quotes. (Examples: Some shows are notable mostly for witty dialog, which doesn't fit well into the standard Wikiquote bulleted-quote format, while other shows are mostly about characters' pithy lines or soliloquys, which fit well. MST3K has the unique requirement to be focused on its primary characters speaking as other characters that change each episode.)

But part of the fun in the wiki community is being proven wrong when new folks come up with better ways and manage to build consensuses (consensi?) to achieve such challenging goals, where others (like myself) have not succeeded in the past. I look forward to your efforts to rally the community. — Jeff Q(talk) 08:53, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please, do not be sorry! I was fascinated by your post, which illuminated many points. There are several parts to such unified guidelines, each one with its own problems. The first is the micro-level: there I feel there can be one format which supports everything (characters speaking as other characters are necessary in many shows, a format which is good enough for a dialog will be good enough for a single pithy saying, which means it is worthy to standardize on). On the macro format, I think it's useful to have season number, episode number and episode name on each section, even if it is technically redundant (if only because it's useful for mid-page linkage). The only real place where I see different shows as validly differing is a) on the table of contents (which does not matter for an automated crawler, given only a small number of options) and b) whether every episode should have a section, quotes or no quotes. Of course, as I write this I realize that episode/season is an american concept, and shows like blackadder will be slightly different. But my *prime* interest is really standardizing the micro-format: the GG micro-format looked excellent, and I even linked to it *after* the VM editors almost converged on its spontaneously (my only big edit was adding links to character pages, and the VM community seems to be growing fast enough for there eventually to be lots and lots of character pages). Specifically, I hate the fact (for example) that the Simpsons page is so different than the VM/GG/Buffy/Angel pages. I wonder how hard it would be to get an overview of the current set of standards, and to see if we can't merge them into one super-standard which will destroy Tokyo. Or something. MosheZadka 09:05, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

My, you're going to make my head swell even more. I created the current Blackadder format as well, which was far easier because of its more limited size. (Its table of contents was my first success in creating attractive custom TOCs.) I don't really think it's materially different, just a matter of terminology (i.e., series vs. season), and Wiki markup and linkable section headers don't care about such things, fortunately. (The lack of numbers, or more accurately, the lack of parentheses, periods, and brackets in and around the episode numbers, definitely avoids some technical difficulties with episode links, which is another reason I happily deleted them from MST3K and Buffy when the eplists became complete.)

Blackadder raises another problem with standardization (and there are many). You'll notice in the current page that it uses lots of blank space between quotes instead of the half-width horizontal rules used in many of the pages I've worked on (another innovation of mine, though kludgy — I hate using HTML when there should be wiki markup for something.) MediaWiki projects and their users have a choice of "skins", or page styles: Monobook, Classic, Nostalgia, Cologne Blue, and "My Skin", which is customizable for each user. (Please excuse me if you already know all this.) Unfortunately, in their zeal to provide such personalizable experiences, the creators of the skin system ignored the impact of different spacing on unusually-formatted pages, like TV and film quotes in Wikiquote. (There is no wiki markup designed for dialog, poetry, or lyrics; what's in use is basically markup for other reasons being subverted because of its look and feel. This is yet another problem that I'm still trying to figure out how to get addressed.) The spacing problem becomes obvious between Classic (which used to be the default skin) and Monobook (which is the current default). Since the newer skin has less spacing, when The Powers That Be changed the default, people started going around and adding extra space between quotes that were no longer distinguishable as separate. But Classic users now see acres of whitespace between each quote. Some people used (and still use) the "----" horizontal-rule markup to divide the quotes, but that looks exactly like the underlining of H1 and H2 headers on Monobook pages, which is somewhat confusing and (IMHO) rather ugly. Thus my half-width HR kludge.

If you were to look at the histories of many TV and film pages with different formats, you might find that I've contributed different kinds of formatting to different pages (and standardized other pages around existing formats that I don't favor). Sometimes I feel like I'm a purveyor of chaos when doing this, but I actually like building up robust examples that differ from each other, in the hopes that, as the Wikiquote community expands, many more people have a chance to consider all the variations to see what they like and don't like. It's all part of my nefarious plan to infiltrate the minds of Wikiquotians (mwah hah hah hah hah!). — Jeff Q(talk) 09:49, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the quote seperation issue is another annoyance I haven't even thought of. The whole "two line breaks", which translates (in my skin?) to "paragraph which includes a line-break" is quite annoying (this convention seems to stumbled on the VM page, stuck by a couple of people which had the tenacity to re-edit quotes for style). I'm not sure if I prefer the hr version, though. Realize I'm wearing three hats -- in one hat, I try to keep the VM page consistent, in the other, I try to add quotes to other TV pages and in the third, I am hoping to be able to automate inserting those pages into a quotes database. Each of these hats is pulling a different way... MosheZadka 11:24, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

When trying to keep an article to a particular style, I find it useful to post my reasons on its Talk page for whatever forms I like, then invite others to present their arguments. If they don't respond, I feel justified in enforcing my views. If they do respond, everyone can work toward an agreeable compromise. Many times users will make changes without realizing how they look to other users with different skins, and will often change their minds or suggest alternatives when they learn about these differences. — Jeff Q(talk) 11:46, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hrm, I looked at the GG page and saw it uses an explicit HTML thing (hr width="50%"). Is this on purpose? I think I'm the only one editing VM for style these days, so I can probably pretty much just overhaul it if it looks more sensible. MosheZadka 12:09, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The HTML thing in Gilmore Girls and other pages is intentional; that's the "half-width horizontal rule" I mentioned above in the Blackadder part of the discussion. I'm not fond of it, as I vastly prefer Wiki markup to HTML, but I dislike the alternatives even more. People seem to be reasonably accomodating in using it, once it's established (especially if there's someone who will quickly add it to the occasional entries that don't include it). I explain it in Talk:Buffy#Separating dialog segments; I guess I'd better paste a copy into Talk:GG, too. — Jeff Q(talk) 18:15, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I was not aware of the ongoing discussion RE:standard format for TV shows; appreciate the heads-up. On the Angel page, I stuck with the Buffy style for the simple reason that I had already formatted most of the quotes that way (I'm also assuming that most Angel fans are Buffy fans as well, and would find the pages more readily useable this way). This is not to say there's anything wrong with your Veronica Mars format, however. When/if there's something approaching a consensus on a "standard" TV format, I'll be glad to cooperate; looks as though you and Jeff Q have begun hammering out some of the technical details. Good luck! --RPickman 18:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Appreciate the vote of confidence for the page. Will try to get some material for every episode posted (my problem is being too much of a fan - I want to include almost everything). The DVD can be rented most places; I recommend it highly. --RPickman 02:52, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm the original writer of To Kit. Certain evidences have been given that this page should not be deleted, and please refer to the discussion page. The page is a translation of its Chinese version. And To Kit is a famous Hong Kong columnist. You can check it out at Wikipedia. Thank you

Jerry Crimson Mang (a Wikipedia user)

Please consider registering. It is extremely hard to communicate with someone who insists on being unreachable.

Adding a deletion template is completely different than removing it. The course of VfD must run through. Your vote is already there, and we must wait until the period is over. I am no more authorized to remove it than anyone else, barring sysops.

I, myself, am somewhat unconvinced about the desirability of such a page -- and as I still have time, I have not changed my vote, at least for the time being.

Hi, thank you for your question. I haven't heard this name so I can't judge if he is notable for Wikiquote or not. If google have entries about him, perhaps notable. But I am not sure. --Aphaia 03:51, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If you're not sure, why not create a stub article (or even a decent one) on Wikipedia? With 440,000 eyeballs, they're a better place to test for notability than we are. If it's accepted (and possibly even given substance) there, you've got credibility here; if not, it may suggest caution. You can always try it here, anyway, but if you do, be sure to add an External links section to give pause to deletionists. ☺ — Jeff Q(talk) 05:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I checked, and while Ryan does not have an entry, "Dinosaur Comics" does, and actually all the things I want to quote are from there -- so that solves my problem! Wikipedia is awesome indeed! MosheZadka 05:43, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I used to have a subscription to Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, which I found very useful before I discovered Wikipedia. I gave up the EBO subscription when my budget tightened, but since WP, I've never had the slightest inclination to go back. WP's range of topics far exceeds any other encyclopedia, online or print, that I've ever seen, and the obvious potential problems with mass editing appear to be well-contained on the vast majority of subjects by the huge voluntary editing population. (And frankly, I'm skeptical of the POVs of all publishers these days. At least WP has a worldwide audience to fight out POV issues.) On my more optimistic days, WP seems to me to be the precusor of a Star Trek-like computer that seems to be able to call up anything you might ask for, or — dare we hope — the ancestor to Gordon R. Dickson's Final Encyclopedia. — Jeff Q(talk) 06:22, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Inertia; list pages are easier to understand and use (assuming someone maintains them well).

List pages have provide better control of display and content than categories.

List pages allow adding non-existing article links, which is currently Wikiquote's most recommended way to create an article.

Current MediaWiki category practice doesn't provide any automatically "rolled-up" or "flat" list of a broad category like "Television shows", only two sections showing a list of subcategories and a list of the articles in the top level.

The best reasons for ditching list pages, of course, are the amount of maintenance effort and the complications from maintaining a manually-edited list (as we've just seen). The real problem is that MW categories are very new, and the MediaWiki world hasn't really figured out how to do everything it wants to with them. — Jeff Q(talk) 15:50, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

By the way, might I encourage you to follow the wiki practice of not capitalizing non-proper nouns (e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer [title] and Dean R. Koontz [name], versus Television shows and List of films [words])? The more regular contributors such as yourself follow this practice, the more occasional editors are likely to pick up the policy by osmosis and not be encouraged to needlessly capitalize article and section titles. ☺ Thanks. — Jeff Q(talk) 15:50, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hrm, I thought I do -- except I don't really create articles all that much, I mostly do clean-up work, so I have little opportunity to osomsise the practice... MosheZadka 17:38, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, what I was referring to is your use of capitalization in section headings, especially on talk pages (e.g., WQ:VP#Ali Sina -- Edit War Brewing). Sorry to be a nudge about this, but the more we provide in-policy examples for newbies, the more likely they are to absorb the policies, and the less pedantic we have to be about them. — Jeff Q(talk) 28 June 2005 09:03 (UTC)

I hope I didn't cause you too much grief about the "Brian Kubatz" list-name restoration. I have an annoying habit of reversing even other sysops on occasion out of a possibly overdeveloped need to act within policy. ☺ Jeff Q(talk) 01:21, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Not grief, but some confusion. When I added a previous article to the VfD, I mentioned a need to remove the quotes from "QOTD suggestions", and you said you'd do it right there and restore later, so I wanted to save people work by removing this one from the list, rather than add to the sysop workload. MosheZadka 03:10, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Touché! I could say that removing individual quotes is different from removing index links to an entire article, but that would be a post-hoc rationalization of my inconsistency. The fact is that there is no real policy for either, other than general removal of redirects (not necessarily related material) from the linked articles of whatever kind, and that policy only exists on Wikipedia currently and could use some Wikiquote-specific amendment for our own copy. My apologies for the confusion. — Jeff Q(talk) 05:02, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I wanted to point out to you here (rather than on VfD) that a link to a non-existent Wikipedia article shouldn't automatically be considered a "sham", just as internal Wikiquote red links aren't assumed to be in bad faith. In the case of Christopher Chippindale, I happened to recall that I added the link myself while doing some standard clean-up and formatting of this article (which I ran across during a Recent Changs [RC] "patrol"). I think I did some rudimentary checking at the time, but to be sure, I just confirmed that this person is indeed the Curator of British Archaeology at the CUMAA (see the staff list). Of course, that doesn't make him necessarily notable enough for Wikiquote, and the article still has no quotes, so there's a good chance my standard clean-up effort was wasted. ☹ But I recommend using neutral language unless the subject is "obviously" nonsense or intended to deceive. — Jeff Q(talk) 11:34, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the polite note. You are right, my language was too harsh...in general, I like using wikipedia as an easy measure of notability, but of course that is not a gold standard. MosheZadka 13:24, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Of course, after all that, you're probably right to think this guy won't have any notable quotes. ☺ Reviewing the state of the article before I cleaned it up, I remember that the original author seemed to be a worshipful student, and they haven't added anything since, even after I posted an encouraging note to their talk page and warned them about the possibility of deletion back in April. Oh, well. — Jeff Q(talk) 22:27, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi, MoscheZadka, thank you for your maintenance work! By the way, as for spamming you woulnd't need to put "test" template - I think this template is appropriate for reckless newbies or editors who are unclear to stand on a good faith. On the contrary, spammers are always aware they violate the site policy. Just my thought. --Aphaia 10:23, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to your prompting, I have finally gotten around to initiating a new system for selecting quotes of the day. The initial idea is currently presented at Wikiquote:Quote of the day/June. ~ Kalki 18:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I voted for some of your proposals, and added the Pascal quote from Pensées (No. 4) to the QotD slots, but I am now suggesting a more extensive excerpt from the W. F. Trotter translation: "True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

Hi, thanks for all your help with the Kath and Kim article. Im not entirely sure whether I should reply underneath your comment on MY talk page, or just add a comment to YOUR talk page, but obviously i decided on the latter :-) I do agree that the half lines in the middle do look much nicer, i will incorporate these into any further editing i do on the page. In the meantime, I've noticed there isnt any set rules for editing the TV pages? Correct me if I'm wrong. Also my other big question is doyou think that a comment along the lines of (and im assuming you've seen kath and kim) " These quotes are written, to a certain extent, to include the manner of speech used on the show (ploise rather than please) but this is not neccessarily always included" or something along those lines at the top of the page? I think it's a good idea, but I'd like another persons opinion. Cheers, --Paddy whack 27 June 2005 04:34 (UTC)

1. Either way is OK. The second is preferable if you want to make sure you get heard. Sometimes, you can cut'n'paste my comment on your talk page to my page, and reply underneath, if you think there would be a lack of context otherwise (like I did).

2. There are no rules, partially because nobody really agreed on such. There are, however, widely accepted practices (like on the pages I pointed you to). My goal is to achieve a soft consensus before having hard-and-fast rules, perhaps not needing rules altogether because everything just looks the same.

3. No, I've never seen an episode of Kath&Kim, sorry. Sometimes, when pronounciation is important to the context of the quote, it's better to put in a phonetic transcription. Usually, though, I find that writing the words is just as useful, and less confusing. In any case, putting a warning at the top is probably counter-productive -- putting a note inline the quote (via ''[Note blah]'' is probably better. ~ MosheZadka(Talk) 27 June 2005 05:46 (UTC)

Thanks for that clarification. I'm really enjoying helping edit here at wikiquote- you, jeff q and Aphaia have been particularly helpful, thanks :-) I agree with you that some form of consensus in the very least- if something cannot be reached with television quotes, of which there are relatively few at a time when there are relatively few editors here at wikiquote- then how can we hope to ever reach any in the future? I do agree though that of all i've seen, this 'buffy' format seems to work the best- at least with this skin. I do realise though that alot of debate has already centred around this issue and as a newbie around here i have relatively little to add

Thanks a bunch for "promoting" shows in the Television shows list that have had articles created for them! And thanks, too, for creating many of them and building up others with some infrastructure and formatting. Could I ask one other small favor? When you create the Wikipedia link with the title, could you surround it with bold/italic markup (5 apostrophes on each side) to indicate article title (bold) and film/TV series title typography (italics)? There are plenty of enhancements that we all eventually add to these stub articles, of course, but I ask that one over others because it's easy to add it to the process of WP-linking the title itself. — Jeff Q(talk) 2 July 2005 08:50 (UTC)